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State Fails Gay Students
AB 222 Dies, but Other Gay-Rights Bills Survive
By Ryan P. Hurd
Managing Editor
"Update"
Southern California's Gay and Lesbian Newspaper
June 9, 1999 Issue 911

Sacramento- Eyes filled with tears and voices cracked with pain on the Assembly floor as legislators implored their peers to forbid discrimination against gay and lesbian students.

After two hours of anguished, often highly personal debate, the Dignity for all students Act perished by a razor thin margin.

Pressed by a June 4th deadline, the state legislator has, in recent days, herded several gay rights bills through their houses of origin in a flurry of party line votes, but the failure of AB 222, the most contentious of the lot makes this a bitter-sweet time for the bills' supporters.

Though the surviving measures mark 1999 as a year of unrivaled promise for California's LGBT community, the well-organized and often vicious campaign to defeat AB 222 - which would have banned discrimination based on sexual orientation in state schools - laid bare the mounting tenacity of the opposition.

The discussion was heated, with opponents comparing homosexuality with beastiality and proponents asserting the need to protect the most vulnerable part of the population.

The Dignity for All Students act, authored by Shelia Kuehl, failed with 38 voting for it and 40 against it. A handful of Democrats opposed the bill; not a single Republican supported it. Two members obstained from voting.

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